Family Holds Hope It Will Stay In U.s.

SAN ANTONIO, FLA. — For Salvador and Maria Contreras, both illegal aliens from Mexico, each day is living openly with the threat of probable deportation.

That concern is compounded by the fact that two of the three Contreras children were born in this country and are legal citizens of the United States. There is no chance, said Salvador, that the children will remain here if their parents and sister are returned to Mexico.

Like thousands of other children born in this country to illegal alien parents who are caught in the web of immigration laws, Leticia, 9, and Salvador, 10 months, will return to their parents' native country. That they are Americans appears to make little difference.

An added concern for the Contrerases is their daughter Marisol, 6. Like her parents, she was born in Mexico and is an illegal alien in this country.

The government's position on what to do with children who were born here to illegal alien parents is a hard-line one.

''We do not deport American citizens,'' said Verne Jervis, spokesman at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service headquarters in Washington. ''We can deport the parents and the children can stay here. It's up to the parents to decide whether the children go with them.''

''No way we're going to leave them behind,'' Contreras said. ''I pay my taxes. I have no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. The only thing we do here is work and eat and sleep and take care of my children.''

In almost every immigration case that involves children born in this country to illegal alien parents, the decision is that reached by the Contreras family -- the children may be U.S. citizens but they will go with their parents.

Deportation? Not technically or legally but certainly in reality.

Contreras, 35, and Mrs. Contreras, 29, have lived in the United States since entering illegally by fording the Rio Grande in the early 1970s. For the past 10 years they have lived in this farming town 9 miles west of Dade City, doing farm work, paying taxes, buying a home and educating their children in public schools.

They face deportation because in 1976 they asked to have their work and residency papers legally adjusted, or ''fixed'' in the term used by Hispanic farm workers caught in the complicated web of regulations administered by INS. Under those regulations, if Leticia were 21 she could legally bring her parents -- but not her sister -- back to the United States under family unification provisions. But that right only extends to citizens over the age of 21.

This policy is based on the belief that thousands of Mexican women living near the U.S. border would cross over into this country to give birth in the knowledge that the child will be an American citizen.

''If you were to open that door, you would in effect legalize every woman of childbearing age in Mexico,'' Jervis said. ''I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but the law is something you try to apply objectively.''

Similarly, many Haitian women arriving illegally in Florida in the 1980 boatlift were pregnant. The children born on American soil are citizens but that did not protect parents against deportation.

Trying to explain her family's legal battle, Maria's plea is simple: ''Since they don't want to help us fix our papers in a legal way and we have to be here illegally, then at least let us live in peace.''

During an interview last week the Contrerases had just completed picking 28 buckets of cherry tomatoes that had earned them $56. Their mobile home with the paneled walls covered with pictures of their children and a large picture of Jesus at the front door shows the accumulated possessions of a 10-year marriage.

They spoke of plans for a July trip to Ohio, where a labor contractor has promised them work picking tomatoes, and a return to Florida in the fall, where they again will work in the citrus groves and vegetable fields.

Mrs. Contreras shakes her head in bewilderment as she tells of taking Leticia to Mexico to visit her dying grandfather near Guadalajara. As an American, Leticia had to obtain a 90-day visa. It was during that trip that Marisol was born, making her a Mexican citizen.

Because Leticia is a U.S. citizen, the Contrerases believed that would help win suspension of a deportation order. In 1976 they paid a Texas lawyer $750 for the paperwork. At the time they applied, such orders were being granted under a 1972 federal court injunction but before they received approval that injunction was lifted.

Last year a Tampa immigration judge ruled they must return to Mexico. Their appeal will likely delay any final action on their residency request for two years, a common occurrence in immigration processing.

The tension of possible deportation hangs heavily on Leticia, a third- grader at the San Antonio Elementary School. She remembers when a classmate's parents were seized by immigration officials.